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Everyone has at least once threatened to delete Facebook. I am guilty of this many a time; I’d probably add a few embarrassing screenshots of the status updates I’ve made in the past claiming I’ll be gone for good if I hadn’t deleted them upon my begrudging return to cover my tracks each time. I don’t have Instagram or Snapchat and my Twitter account was set up by a friend of mine as another platform for plugging my blog posts which I don’t even think I remember the password for and could never get my head around using. If I did eventually delete Facebook, that’d be it for me and social media. And my god, isn’t it hard to cut all ties like that in this modern networking world?

Social media is as close to literally as grammar will allow me the air we breathe. It’s the thing we turn to when we’re waiting for a bus, or are bored in a lecture, or simply just as something to do when we aren’t doing anything else. The mind-numbing scrolling of news-feeds becomes almost addictive and it’s now normal to see groups of people on a night out all stood in a circle on their phones in the middle of the dance floor, side-stepping or bobbing their heads to keep themselves from being completely sucked in to this alternate online universe. You can’t really have a conversation with someone without them checking their phone, which is linked up to and synced with every social media app under the sun. I don’t know if I’m using the correct terminology here as even being an avid Facebook user I’m still a bit behind with all the other shit people use right now, but you know what I mean.

So why am I deleting Facebook? There are so many reasons. There has to be for it to cross everyone’s mind at least once in their social media career. As I said before there’s been so many times when I’ve threatened this break-up and as predicted I’ve always come crawling back – the main reason for the last few years being the connection to a vast amount of people for sharing my blog posts, keeping up to date with who is getting married or having a baby or buying a house (yep, adulthood is certainly looming) and generally being a nosy bitch.

Which leads me on to my first reason for wanting to delete Facebook: it’s the most pointless waste-of-time that distracts me from doing things that are actually important or meaningful. For example: face-to-face human interaction. Updating my blog, as I love to write. Working on assignments that have looming deadlines. Doing absolutely anything productive in general and living actual life. The list is endless, and we all know it. I update my Facebook status constantly with my itchy wannabe-writer fingers and it generally just seems to annoy those that don’t try have a presence within the social media platform. Of course, it isn’t only negative feedback that I receive on my updates but I certainly have had a backlash on a number of occasions. I have realised that there is an unspoken ‘right way to be’ on social media and unfortunately I have never fit in to that.

And so the people are my next reason for wanting to delete Facebook. There are so many within my online community that use social media to make sure they’re up to date with what everyone else is doing and then going and having a big ol’ (private) discussion about it. It seems that the only way you will not get judged on Facebook is if you do not post on it. I like to call these individuals ‘Facebook Snakes’, slinking around in the undergrowth knowing everything about anything but never really coming to the surface and making themselves known for everyone else to see. When a juicy scoop comes in you can bet they’ll all be having a bitch about it at the next pre-drinks, but when they’re next online, back they slink. Clearly I am referring to personal experience here. Is this just a student thing? Anyway, I don’t want to be associated with all of that. I am a self-admitted ‘over-sharer’ and try to be open and honest about the things I think and feel.

As I’m sure is the case for all of us, I cannot deny that I haven’t spent many an hour doing what has been affectionately labelled as ‘Facebook-stalking’ people. Sometimes your self-esteem is so low that you can dedicate a whole day to lying in bed in your pyjamas, clicking through people’s pictures and sighing at how wonderful their lives and/or faces are. Facebook use inadvertently involves judging and being judged – although everything we post is ‘fake’ anyway. We post what we want people to know and allude to what we want people to think. Everything you see on Facebook, for those reasons, are like the filters people use on their pictures. We post what we want people to see about ourselves, and the rest is obsolete.

This doesn’t even begin to cover the fact that people don’t care about the things you care about; all too often it appears to be too much effort for people to support you by doing something as simple as ‘liking’ a project you’re involved in and passionate about. If this is what we are using Facebook for and not to encourage and help our friends, what is the point? This constant cycle of judgement is my last reason (mentioned in this post, there are so many more that I won’t go in to) for wanting to delete Facebook. Why would I purposefully associate myself with everything that brings me down? And can I please stress that they bring ME down. I am sure there are people who can use social media in a positive and healthy way.

Right now, I’m trying to back up all my pictures and people I don’t want to lose contact with – then I can finally shut my profile down. It’ll be interesting to see how long I stay off Facebook for this time. We as a culture rely on social media so much, but it’d be nice to actually hang out with people more often or speak over the phone and engage in real, interesting conversation that goes beyond how big someone’s lips are. It’ll be especially difficult for me seeing as I like to write down everything that crosses my mind but hopefully I’ll just be updating my blog more often.

Either way, this is for the best for me for now. If you would like to keep up to date with my blog, please subscribe to The Very Hungry Cirettapillar via email using the ‘follow’ button to the right of this post.